I still think people are trying to wind me up when they tell me volumes of alcohol like that. Hats off to them, they have remarkable bodies to be able to cope with that for even a short period of time. After one day I'd have alcohol poisoning and would be gone.

Wowser!! My late father was an alcoholic but I don't think he ever drank that much in one day. (hmmm, how many ounces in a quart again?) Of course, nothing he could do would have made him healthy, he had cluster headaches, cancer & Chron's later in life but after that week-long black out he did scale back his drinking.

You learn something new every day around here. I had to Google AST/ALT.

Mr. Mobius -- They're "remarkable bodies" adapted by long practice. I don't think any alcoholic starts out there. (Disclosure: I'm a recovering alcoholic, and I managed to drink for some years at a level that would've knocked my husband flat out...)

"This morning, for instance, I had a quart for December 5, 1281, one for February 9, 1532, and one for August 6, 3249 BC. But considering that the Earth is 1,643,000,000,000 days old, I'm still WAY behind."

A friend's boyfriend can drink that much, easy. It isn't pretty. He can drink two pitchers of beer and three or four mex restaurant margaritas. Then go home and drink a whole bottle of scotch and some tequila. Of course, he never remembered any of it.....

I have been amazed at the degree of neurological disease in people that are long term alcoholics. The lasting slurring and tremoring seem a ton worse than other drugs. Of course people can drink heavily longer than people can shoot up meth....don't think the meth heads live long enough to have real lng term problems.

Neighbor died last year at 61, a hard death it was, from years of drinking. The only good thing about it was that my teenage son got to witness first hand the effects, for he and I would have to pick him up off the floor a couple of times per week and get him into bed. My son started helping me do that when he was 15 because physically I was not able to do it so easily. He was a self medicating chronic depressive. He would still be alive if he had treatment.

My father's alcoholism can be traced to self-medicating. I know that he was abused at least emotionally by his mother. I'm not sure who abused him sexually.

My second husband was self-medicating bipolar depressing with alcohol. He was a binge drinker and wasn't sure if he'd have to never drink again or be able to drink socially. He found that he could drink socially by finding a few people (including me) that he would listen to who were able to cut him off.

He eventually got to a point where he was able to do this himself most of the time but never drinks without someone with him. Unfortunately, this is very very rare. Given the propensity for addiction when a parent has alcoholism I watch myself closely for addiction to anything (food, actions etcetera) and have spoken about it to my children as well.

I find it interesting that studies have shown people with bipolar disorder often (don't recall the percentage) have alcoholism in their immediate family.

blecus - how one feels the morning after drinking without alternating alcohol and water, especially with no food on the stomach.

I'm going to nitpick: Technically his name is inaccurate as EtOH depletes pydridoxine/B6 and thus suppresses ALT production, for which B6 is a cofactor (hence the classic AST to ALT ratio of at least 3-to-1 in alcoholics).

I believe it.... especially after the following conversation had with a patient when I was an intern at a pharmacy chain:

Pt: I really don't know if I want to fill this prescription for naproxen that my doctor wrote for me for my pain. I did some looking up on the internet and I'm concerned about the side effects. I also saw that there is an interaction with alcohol.Ms. Intern: It seems you're concerned about side effects and the possible interaction between naproxen and alcohol. How much alcohol would you say you drink in a week?Pt: Oh, not that much at all.Ms. Intern: Well, how many times a week would you say you drink?Pt: Maybe four, five, six nights a week.Ms. Intern: And how many beverages do you drink each night that you drink?Pt: Oh, I don't know. Maybe fifteen, twenty, twenty-five on the weekend nights. (Laughs) Not a lot, y'know.Ms. Intern: So you consume roughly 60 to 100 beers a week?Pt: Well geez, when you say it like that, you make it sound bad.

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